Share via

The FBI is investigating how a box containing 16 vials of the smallpox virus lay untouched in a storeroom in Washington for more than 40 years.

For decades, the cardboard box had been forgotten in a cold storage room in Building 29A until scientists began a big clear-out ready for a move.

Among boxes containing glass bottles labelled flu virus, mumps and typhus were 16 vials marked “variola” — the smallpox virus which is supposed to be stored in only two high-security locations in the world.

Freeze-dried and sealed with melted glass, the vials, boxed with cotton padding, had been left